If he's goin' to be ran down it's got to be done with relays, like you was runnin' down a wild hoss." Billy rubbed his bald head and thought and thought.
With that orderliness which had become his habit of mind, from work with reports and papers, sorting and filing away, Billy went back to the beginning.

Dan Barry was fleeing.

He started from Rickett, and nine chances out of ten he was heading, eventually, towards those practically impenetrable mountain ranges where the sheriff before had lost the trail after the escape from the cabin and the killing of Mat Henshaw.

Towards this same region, again, he had retreated after the notorious Killing at Alder.

There was no doubt, then, humanly speaking, that he would make for the same safe refuge.
At first glance this seemed quite improbable, to be sure, for the Morgan Hills lay due east, or very nearly east, while the place from which Barry must have sallied forth and to which he would return was somewhere well north of west, and a good forty miles away.